Philip, twisting round under his father’s arm, burst into tears of rage,
tore the book from his hand and struck him.
It had been a terrible moment, and Rosamund, reduced as she almost was
to Philip’s condition, had never more admired her husband, who, turning
only rather pale, had walked away, saying, “I think you’ll be sorry for
that when you think it over, old fellow.” That he had been astonished,
cut to the quick, she had seen, feeling it all for him at the moment of
her deepest feeling for Philip.
“I’m not sorry! I’m not sorry!” Philip had sobbed, rushing to her arms
and burying his head on her breast. “I’m not sorry! He’s stupid! stupid!
stupid!”
“Hush, hush,” she had said--what a horrid moment it had been! “That is
wrong and conceited of you, Philip. You must learn to take a little
chaffing. You know how your father loves you.”
“It’s not conceited! It’s not conceited to care about what one tries to
do. You know it’s not. _You’re_ not stupid!” the boy had sobbed.
Alas, it had been only four years ago; only a year before the war! Even
then, at nine, Philip had been old enough, when he recovered from his
weeping, to know that he had hurt her most, had made things difficult
for her; and he had been sorry about his father, too, going to him
bravely with a tremulous, “Please forgive me, father.” “That’s all
right, old boy,” Charlie had said. It _was_ all right, too, in a sense.
It left not a trace in the sweetness of Charlie’s nature. It was Philip
who had been shaken, frightened to the very core, by what his own
outburst had revealed to himself and to her. The boy would always have
felt affection for his father; but he, too, would soon have protected
him; he, too, would hardly miss him.
The moon had now risen far up out of the walnut branches, and flooded
the garden with sorrowful brightness. Poor, poor Charlie! was that all
it came to, then, for him? this deserted garden and a wife and children
who hardly missed him? Why, was it not the very heart of his tragedy for
her to see that they would be happier without him? “And he _was_ a
dear,” she said to herself, remembering with an almost passionate
determination kind, trustful looks and the happy love of fifteen years
ago.
She had been standing still all this while, near the evening primroses;
but now, with the great sigh that lifted her breast, she moved forward
again, and a bird, disturbed in its rest, flew out from the thick tangle
of honeysuckle at the entrance to the summer-house, startling her. As
she stopped, her eyes drawn to the spot, she saw, suddenly, that a pale
figure was sitting in the summer-house, closely shrunken to one side;
hoping in its stillness,--that was apparent,--to remain undiscovered.
Ever since she had entered the garden it must have been sitting there;
and ever since she had entered the garden it must have been watching
her. But why? How strange!
Dispelling a momentary qualm, she stooped her head under the honeysuckle
and entered; and then, clearly visible, with her pale hair and face,--as
pale, as evident as an evening’s primrose,--the girl sitting there,
wide-eyed, revealed, with her identity, that haunting analogy of a
little while ago. Of course, it came in a flash now, that was what they
reminded her of. Long ago she had thought--conceding them their most
lovable association--that Pamela Braithwaite looked like an evening
primrose.
“My dear Pamela,” she said, almost as gently as she would have said it
to a somnambulist; for, like the flowers, again, she was sad, even
uncanny; although Pamela’s uncanniness too,--sweet, homely
creature,--could never be sinister. She put a hand upon her arm, for the
girl had started to her feet.
“Oh--do forgive me, Mrs. Hayward!” Pamela gasped. Sad? It was more than
that. She was broken, spent with weeping. “I didn’t know you were
coming. I sit here sometimes in the evenings. I thought you wouldn’t
mind.”
“My dear child, why should I mind? I’m thankful to you for coming to the
sad little place. It’s much less lonely to think about, for you have
always been so much of our life here.”
This, she knew, was an exaggeration; but she must be more than kind to
such grief as this: she must find some comfort, if that were possible.
And to feel herself accepted, welcomed, did give comfort; for, sinking
again on the seat, bending her face on her hands, Pamela sobbed, “Oh,
how kind you are!”
“Poor child, poor, poor child!” said Rosamund. She was only five years
older, but she felt as a mother might feel towards the stricken girl.
She put an arm around her, murmuring, “Can you tell me what it is? Don’t
cry so, dear Pamela.”
Pamela Braithwaite had been a girl of eighteen when they had come, in
the first year of their marriage, to Crossfields. The Braithwaites lived
a mile away, near the river, a large, affectionate, desultory family,
in a large, dilapidated house. Already Pamela mothered the younger
brood, and mothered the widowed father as well--a retired tea-planter,
who had brought from Ceylon some undefined but convenient complaint that
enabled him to pass the rest of his days wrapped in a number of coats,
eating very heartily, and, as he expressed it, “sitting about.” A
peaceful, idle man, legs outstretched in sun or firelight, hat-brim
turned down over his eyes (he had a curious way, even in the house, of
almost always wearing his hat), pipe between his teeth; good-looking,
too, tall and fair, like his daughters, and with a touch in his
appearance, though not in his character, of amicable distinction.
Pamela, except for a brother already married and in Ceylon, was the
eldest, with a long gap between her and the group of younger brothers,
of whom Rosamund thought mainly as a reservoir of Boy Scouts until they
had had to be thought of as a reservoir of volunteers. There were three
or four younger sisters, too, some of whom had married and some of whom
had gone forth into the world--always with an extreme light-heartedness
and confidence--as companions or secretaries. These again were hardly
individualized in Rosamund’s recollection, except for the fact that,
since Pamela was always making blouses or trimming hats for them, she
had become aware that it was Phyllis who wore pink and Marjory blue.
But whoever went, Pamela always stayed; and even when the war broke upon
the world, with Frank, the Braithwaite baby, just old enough to enlist,
and Phyllis and Marjory at once enrolling themselves as V.A.D.'s, Pamela
remained rooted. Who, indeed, had she gone, would have taken care of
Mr. Braithwaite, and of the brothers and sisters home on leave, and of
the garden earnestly dedicated to potatoes, or the small family of
Ceylon nephews and nieces deposited continually in her charge by their
parents?
Poor little Pamela! She had had a burdened life; the assiduities of
maternity and none of its initial romance. With her large, clear eyes,
very far apart, she had always a wistful look; but it was that of a
child watching a game and waiting for its turn to come in, and no
creature could have given less the impression of weariness or routine.
For she had remained, even at thirty-three, the merely bigger sister; an
atmosphere of schoolroom tea and the nurture of rabbits and guinea-pigs
still hanging about her; her resource and cheerfulness seeming concerned
always with the organizing of games, the care of pets, and the soothing
of unimportant distresses. Tall, in her scant tweed skirts, her
much-repaired white blouse, her slender feet laced into heavy boots,
gardening gloves on her hands, so Rosamund had last seen her, a year
ago, just before Charlie had been killed, when she had straightened
herself from moulding potatoes in the lawn borders and had come forward
with her pretty smile to greet her visitor and take her in to tea. Frank
had been killed since then, as well as Charlie, but at that time, for
both households, the war was splendid adventure rather than sorrow.
Mr. Braithwaite, in the sunny, shabby drawing-room, had stumbled up
among his wrappings, to point out to her his accurate flags, advancing
or retreating on the many maps that were pinned upon the walls. Frank’s
last letter had been read to her, and Dick’s and Eustace’s; and Pamela
had come in and out, helping the maid with the tea (the Braithwaite
maids were always as cheerful and desultory as the family, and Rosamund
never remembered seeing one of them who had not her cap askew or her
cuffs untied), standing to butter the bread herself, the side of the
loaf before cutting the slice, after her old schoolroom fashion; her
discreet yet generous use of the butter--the crust covered to a nicety
and no lumps on the crumb--seeming to express her, as did the pouring
out of the excellent tea, drawn to a point and never over, and the
pleasant, capacious cups with their gilt rims and the immersed rose
which, as one drank, discovered itself at the bottom.
A sweet, old-fashioned, homely creature; like the evening primroses;
like them, obliterated, unnoticed in daylight; and like them now,
becoming visible, becoming personal, even becoming tragic at this
nocturnal hour; for was this really Pamela, sweet, prosaic Pamela,
sobbing so broken-heartedly beside her? How meagre, intellectual, and
unsubstantial her own grief seemed to Rosamund as she listened, almost
aghast, her arm about Pamela’s shoulders; and her instinct told her: “It
is a man. It is some one she loves--not Frank, but some one she loves
far more--who is dead. It is something final and fatal that has broken
her down like this.” And aloud she repeated: “Can you tell me, Pamela
dear? Please try to tell me. It may help you to tell.” Her own heart was
shaken and tears were in her own eyes.
Between her sobs Pamela answered, “I love him--I love him so much. He is
dead. And sometimes I can’t bear it.”
Rosamund had never heard of a love-affair. But these years of war had
done many things, had found out even the hidden Pamelas.
“I didn’t know.--My poor child!--I never heard. Were you engaged?”
She had Pamela’s ringless hand in hers.
“No! No! It wasn’t that. No--I’ve never had any one like that. No one
ever knew. He never knew.” Pamela lifted her head. Her face seemed now
only a message emerging from the darkness; shadowed light upon the
shadow, it was expression rather than form. “May I tell you?” she said.
“Can you forgive my telling you--here and now,--and to-night, when
you’ve come to be with him? It was Mr. Hayward I loved. I’ve always
loved him. He has been all my life. Ever since you first came here to
live.”
Rosamund gazed at her, and through all her astonishment there ran an
undertone of accomplished presage. Yes, that was it, of course. Had she
not been feeling it, seeking it all the evening?--or had it not been
seeking her? Here it was, then, the lacking emptiness. Desolate voids
seemed to open upon her in Pamela’s shadowy eyes. She tightly held the
ringless hand and felt, presently, that she pressed it against her heart
where something pierced her. Was it pity for Pamela? or for Charlie?
This was his; had always been his. And Pamela, who had had nothing, had
lost everything. “My dear!” she murmured.
“Oh, how kind you are!” said Pamela. She sat quiet, looking down at
their two hands held against Rosamund’s heart. And with all the
austerity of her grief she had never been more childlike in Rosamund’s
eyes. Like a child, once the barriers of shyness were down and trust
established, she would confide everything.
Rosamund knew how it must help her to confide. “Tell me if you will,”
she said. “I am glad you loved him, if it has not hurt you too much. You
understand, don’t you, that I must be glad--for him?”
“Yes, oh, yes; I understand. How beautiful of you to see it all!--Even
though it’s so little, it is his; something he did; and so you must
care. But I don’t think there’s much to tell; nothing about him that you
don’t know.”
“About you, then. About what he was to you.”
“That would simply be my whole life,” said Pamela. “It’s so wonderful of
you to understand and not to blame me. So many people would have thought
it wrong; but it came before I knew what it was going to be, and I never
can feel that it was wrong. He never knew. And even if he had, it
couldn’t have made any difference. It must be because of that that I can
tell you. If you hadn’t been so happy, if it hadn’t been so perfect--for
you and him--I don’t think that I could have told. I should just have
rushed away when you came in and hidden from you.”
“Why?” asked Rosamund after a moment. She heard something in her own
voice that Pamela would not hear.
“I don’t quite know why,” said Pamela; “but don’t you feel it too?
Perhaps if it hadn’t been so perfect, even my little outside love might
have hurt you--or troubled you--to hear about. But I see now that you
are the only person in the world who could care to hear. It is a comfort
to tell you. I am so glad you came.” Pamela turned her eyes upon her
and it was almost with her smile. “When I see you like this I can
believe that he is here, listening with you, and sorry for me, too.”
How like an evening primrose she was! Rosamund could see her clearly
now: the candid oval of the face, the eyes, the innocent, child forehead
with thick, fair hair falling across it.
“Yes. Go on,” she said, smiling back.
She was not worthy of Pamela, and poor Charlie was not worthy of her;
but no human being is worthy of a flower. And though so innocent, she
was not stupid; subtlety like a fragrance was about her as she said,
“You can comfort me because you have so much to comfort with.”
“So much grief, or so much remembered happiness?”
“They go together, don’t they?” said Pamela. “Every sort of fulness. But
I needn’t try to get it clear. You understand. I always thought that
perhaps people who had fulness couldn’t; now I see that I was mistaken.”
“Have you been very unhappy, dear child?”
"Until now? While he was here? Oh, no, I have been lonely. Even before
he came, even though my life was so crowded, it was rather lonely. I
never had any one of my own, for myself. But afterwards, even if I felt
lonely, I was happy. At least, after just at first. Because, just at
first, it was miserable, for I couldn’t help longing to see him more and
to have him like me more, and that made me understand that I was in love
with him, and I was frightened. I can’t explain clearly about it, even
to myself. But I was very, very unhappy. Perhaps you remember the time
when I was twenty, and got so run down, and they sent me to Germany to
my old governess--the only time I ever went away from home, out of
England. It was a miserable time. I tried not to think of him and not to
care. But I had to come back, and he was there, and I knew I couldn’t
stop caring, and that all I could do about it was to try to be better
because of him,--you know,--and make people happier, and not think of
myself, but of him and them. And everything changed after that. I was
never frightened any more, and though perhaps it wasn’t exactly
happiness, it was, sometimes, I believe, almost better. I can’t explain
it, but what I mean is in some poetry. I never cared much about poetry
till he came. Then I seemed to understand things I’d never understood
before, and to feel everything that was beautiful.
“You remember how dear he was to us all--to the boys and me. I always
shared in everything they did. Every bit of this country is full of him;
I could never bear to go away and leave it. I want always to stay here
till I die.--Flowers and birds--wasn’t he wonderful about them? And our
walks in the woods! He saw everything, and made us see it. I never woke
in the morning without thinking, Will he come to-day? What will he say
and do? I was never tired of watching him and listening to him. All his
little ways--you know. When I pleased him,--sometimes I saw the bird we
were watching for first, or caught my trout well,--it was a red-letter
day. And in big things--to feel I should have pleased him if he’d known.
It was he who helped me in every way, without knowing it. And I took
more and more joy in you. At first I had felt dreadfully shy with
you--and afraid of you. You were so clever, with all your books and
music and friends, and you didn’t seem to need anything. But afterwards
you were so kind, that, though I was always shy, I was not frightened
any longer. I used to think about you so much, and imagine what he felt
about you--and you about him.--You won’t mind my saying it, I know.
Perhaps you remember the way I used so often, in the evenings, to walk
past with the children, and say good-night over the wall. That was to
see you and him walking together. You were so beautiful! You are far and
far away the most beautiful person I’ve ever known. I always noticed
everything you wore, and how your hair was done. I was glad when you
took it down from the knot and had it all at the back, as you do now.
And the lovely pale blue dress, with the little flounces--do you
remember?--a summer dress of lawn. I did love that. And the white linen
coats and skirts, and the big white hat with the lemon-coloured bow.
Your very shoes--those grey ones you always had, with the low heels and
little silver buckles. No one had such lovely clothes. And the way you
poured out tea and looked across the table at one. Always like a
beautiful muse--you don’t mind my saying it?--a little above everything,
and apart, and quietly looking on.--How I understood what he felt for
you! I felt it, too, I think, with him.”
Yes, dear flower and child, she had: offering to Charlie that last
tribute of a woman’s worship, the imaginative love of the woman he
loves; cherishing the cruelly sweet closeness of that piercing
community. How she had idealized them both. How she had idealized
Charlie’s love. Charlie had never seen her like this. Charlie had never
dreamed of her as a muse, above, apart, and quietly watching. Why, with
Pamela’s Charlie she herself could almost have been in love!
“What did you talk about, you and he,” she asked, “when you were
together?” Their sylvan life, Pamela’s and Charlie’s, was almost as
unknown to her as that of the birds they watched. She had almost a soft
small hope that perhaps Pamela could show her something she had missed.
“Did you ever talk about poetry, for instance?”
“No; never about things like that,” Pamela answered. “He talked more to
the boys than to me; he talked to us all together--about what we were
doing. But I used to love listening to him when he came and talked to
father. Politics, you know; and the way things ought to be done. He was
a great deal discouraged, you remember, by the way they _were_ being
done. All those unjust taxes, you know. He wanted, he used always to
say, to _give_ to the poor himself; he _loved_ taking care of them. But
he hated that his money should be taken from him like that, against his
will. And he always, always foresaw the war; always knew that Germany
was plotting, and how England swarmed with spies. He thought we ought to
have declared war upon her long ago and struck first.--I’m rather glad
we didn’t, aren’t you? because then, in a way, we should have been in
the wrong rather than they; but of course he felt it as a statesman, not
like an ignorant woman.--You think Germany plotted, too?”
“Yes, oh, yes.” How glad Rosamund was to be able to think it, to be
able, here, with a clear conscience, to remember that, on the theme of
Germany’s craft and crime, she and Charlie had thought quite
sufficiently alike. “But I am with you about not striking first.”
“Are you really?” There was surprise in Pamela’s voice. She did not
dwell on the slight perplexity. “Of course, he always worsted father if
he disagreed. It was rather wicked of me, but I couldn’t help enjoying
seeing father worsted. He’d never thought things out, as Mr. Hayward
had. But that’s what he talked about--things like that--and you.”
“Me?” Rosamund’s voice was gentle, meditative--her old voice of the
encounters with Charlie. How she could hear him through all Pamela’s
candid recitative!
"He was always thinking about you. ‘My wife says so and so. My wife
agrees with me about it. I brought my wife last night to see it as I
do.’ Oh, you were with him in everything! It was so beautiful to see and
hear! I used to imagine that the Brownings were like that--after I read
their lives. He was a sort of poet, wasn’t he? Any one so loving and so
happy is a sort of poet--even if they don’t write poetry. Down in the
meadows one day, when we were watching lapwings, he and I and the
boys,--he wanted to show us a nest; you know how difficult they are to
find,--you passed up on the hillside, with Philip and Giles. We could
see you against the larchwood, they in their holland smocks and you in
white, with the white-and-yellow hat. I shall never forget the way he
stood up and smiled, his eyes following you. 'There’s Rosamund and the
progeny,' he said.--You know the dear, funny way he had of saying
things."
Yes--she knew it. Yet tears had risen to Rosamund’s eyes. Dear old
Charlie; dear, old, tiresome Charlie! The tears had come as she saw him
standing to look after her and his boys; but there was nothing more,
nothing that she could give to Pamela, not one crumb of enrichment from
what Pamela believed to be her great store. Pamela had seen all--and
more than all--that there was to see.
In her own silence now she was aware of a growing oppression. She was
too silent, even for one mute from the depth and sacredness of memory.
Might not such silence seem to reprove Pamela’s flooding confidence? She
struggled with her thoughts. “The lapwings?” she heard herself
murmuring. “I remember his showing me a nest. How he loved birds and how
much he knew about them! Weren’t you with us on the day we put up all
the nesting-boxes here? Do you remember how he planned for the placing
of each one, each bird to have its own appropriate domain? It was a
lovely day, in very early spring.”
“Oh--_do_ you remember that?” How Pamela craved the crumb was shown by
her lightened face; it was almost happy, as it turned to Rosamund, with
its sense of recovered treasures. "Very early spring--March. Snowdrops
were up over there,--and there,--and there were daffodils at the foot of
the wall. You were in blue: a frieze coat and skirt of Japanese blue,
with a grey silk scarf and a little soft grey hat with a blue wing in
it; and you said,--you were standing just over there, near the
pond,--‘We can always count on tits.’--But you did get robins, too, and
thrushes in the big boxes; and then the splendid year when the
nut-hatches came to the box down in the orchard. And you were tying up
one box, but it was too high and he came and did it for you. I can see
you both so plainly, your hands stretching up against the sky. Tall as
you are he was taller; his head seemed to tower up into the branches.
Such a blue sky it was! And afterwards we had tea in the drawing-room,
and the tea wasn’t strong enough for him, and you liked China and he
Indian tea. And you teased him and said that you had always to make him
the little brown pot all for himself. He said, ‘Tea never tastes so
right as out of a brown pot.’ There were white tulips growing in a bowl
on the tea-table. And then you played to us. And you sang--‘I need no
star in heaven to guide me.’--He was so fond of that. Oh, do you remember
it all, too?"
All--all. Rosamund, though her tears fell, felt her cheek flushing in
the darkness. How often he had asked for "I need no star in heaven to
guide me"! How often she had sung it to him, rejoicing so soon, while
she threw the proper tumultuous fervour that Charlie loved into the
foolish air, in the atoning thought that already Philip’s favourite was
“Der Nussbaum” and that even little Giles asked for “the sheep song,”
the bleak, beautiful old Scottish strain: “Ca' the yowes to the knowes,”
with its sweetest drop to “my bonnie dearie.” “Oh--give us something
cheerful!” Charlie would exclaim after it.
“I remember it all, dear,” she answered; and there was silence for a
while.
“How do you bear it?” Pamela whispered suddenly.
The hour, the stillness, the hands that held her, drew her past the last
barrier. Her broken heart yearned for the comfort that the greater loss
alone could give. What was the strength that enabled his wife to sit
there so quietly, so gently, so full of peace and pity?
Rosamund felt herself faltering, stumbling, as she heard the inevitable
question, and knew, as it came, that even Pamela’s heavenly blindness
might not protect her, unless she could be very careful, from horrid
loss or suspicion. To touch with a breath of her daylight reality that
silver world of recollection would be to desecrate. Could she hold her
breath and tread softly while she answered? Yes, surely. Surely she, who
had hidden through all the years from Charlie, could hide from Pamela,
although Pamela already was nearer than Charlie and knew her better than
he had ever done. All the old strength and resource welled up in her,
protecting this lovely thing, as, after the long moment, not looking at
Pamela, but into Charlie’s garden, she found the right answer.
“You see, dear, it is so different with me. You have only your memories.
I have the boys--his boys--to live for.”
It was right. It was the only answer. She heard Pamela’s long, soft
breaths, full of a gentle awe, and felt her hand more tightly clasped.
Once the right step was taken, it was easier to go on:
"I want to tell you why I am so glad to have found you here, Pamela
dear. You’ll understand, I think, when I say that motherhood lives in
the present and future, and is almost cruel, cruel to everything not
itself, for it forgets the past in the present. Do you see,"--she found
the beautiful untruth,--“he is so much in them for me, that I might
almost forget him in them--forget to mourn him, as one would if they
were not there. So do you see why it comforts me to know that, while I
must go on into the future with them, you will be keeping him here and
remembering?”
She could look at Pamela now, in safety, and she turned to her, finding
rapt eyes upon her.
“Come here often, won’t you, when I’m away as well as when I’m here. We
must make it all look again as it did when he was with us--flowers and
trees and bird-boxes. You will help me in it all and you will think of
him here and love him. I know what happiness you meant to him--more than
he was aware of. You were a beautiful part of his life. You say you were
always, for him, only together, with the boys. That is only partly true.
He used often to speak of you to me, the little passing things people
say of any one they are very fond of and take for granted. He
appreciated you and counted upon you. I came here so sad, Pamela, so
burdened. I’ve never been sadder in my life than I was to-night as I
walked here. And you have lifted it all. It makes all the difference to
know that you are here, in his garden, remembering him. More difference
than I can say.”
It was an unutterable gratitude that, with her tears, with love and pity
and reverence, welled up in her, seeing what Pamela had done. The garden
was no longer empty, and Charlie not forgotten. In the night of his
death and disappearance this flower had become visible. Always, when she
thought of him, she would think of evening primroses and of Pamela, so
that it would be with tenderness, with the understanding, homely,
unexacting, consecrating, that Pamela gave; Pamela herself becoming a
gift from Charlie; emerging from the darkness, evident and
beautiful,--almost another child whose future she must carry in her
heart; though the only gift she could give her now, in return for all
that she had given, was the full and free possession of the past,
where, outside the garden wall, she had been a wistful onlooker. She
felt that she opened the gate, drew Pamela in, and put into her keeping
all the keys that had weighed so heavily in her unfitted hands.
[Illustration: decorative bar]